


America

by ongreenergrasses



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 21:38:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ongreenergrasses/pseuds/ongreenergrasses
Summary: That night, she finally sees him and her heart stops.





	America

It is not the destruction of this world that tests Diana. It is not the destroyed villages, the thousands and thousands of deaths. Diana has seen things she did not comprehend at the time, things that she still does not comprehend. It is not the pillaging and the horrors and the tragedies that plague her during the day. Those do not stop her in her tracks as she moves through her day. It is the losses that are so intimate, so personal, that wound her; she is not tested by the cruelty of an entire world so much as the loss of one man. (And what a man.)

_She entered Veld and she saw the soldiers out of the corner of her eye, heard them shooting. She did not understand what occupation truly meant for the people of this village until she talked to the women there, heard their stories. Steve found her sitting behind the inn, staring down in the space between her two clasped hands resting on her knees. “They were raped,” she said into the space between them, and she felt him sink down next to her. “They were not worth death, Steve. In my culture it is an honor to die in battle, Amazons are raised in battle. To have your body mastered, conquered…it is a fate worse than death.” She realized she was crying just as the tears that have been threatening began to spill down her cheeks. He did not touch her, for how could he?_

_“I am so sorry, Diana,” he said, and she heard his apology for what it was._

At night she dreams. At first she dreamt of all the things she had done and lost in agonizing detail – they were not dreams so much as replays, remembrances. She walks her footsteps once more, retracing her path through Belgium. She spends time training with Antiope, practicing for hours to improve her technique and speed. She sees her mother and the senators, her old nursemaid, and envisions the banquets they once had. She wants to believe that these are not dreams, that this is the kindness of the gods, allowing her to see those so dear to her one last time.

When the dreams begin to change, it is Antiope that comes to her.

They walk along the cliffs of Themyscira, and at first Diana cannot see the face of the woman who accompanies her. She knows Antiope from her back. She would be able to recognize her aunt from nothing more than her arms.

“How is the world of men, Diana?”

Diana does not know what to say.

“We always knew it would be folly to return. Only you could ever go, Diana, only you would have such blind naivety.” Her aunt spins and fixes her with a glare. “You know nothing of humans, Diana, and I know that you think yourself beyond this advice, that you are now an expert after spending a week in their company, but always remember where the Amazons have come from. Remember our purpose.

“How can you say that?” Diana is shocked, not at the cruelty of her aunt but at the blunt direction of her words. Antiope had always been direct but this goes beyond anything Diana had ever expected. “How can you say such things?”

“Men have always been our weakness, my child,” Antiope says, and Diana cannot stop herself from inhaling sharply because it is too soon, too soon, too soon to talk of men. (She has not stopped feeling the grief that has consumed her, feeling it as keenly as if she had been stabbed in the stomach. Grief is infinitely more painful than she had anticipated.) “I was fortunate, Menalippe as well. We were blessed by the gods when we found each other, blessed that our eyes never strayed towards the charms and shapes of men. But your mother understands.”

“What is your meaning, aunt?”

Antiope looks at her. No more words are said, and then Antiope spins on her heel and walks away. “Antiope! Antiope, what do you mean?”

Diana wakes hugging one of her pillows to her chest, and notices that her face is wet with tears.

Etta rouses her with soft knocking. (Diana would like to say otherwise, but her weakness and her emotions got the best of her after the battle with Ares. She remembers very little of her return to England, and it comes back to her in flashes that she would rather not see. She remembers her battle with Ares all too well.) “Diana, love, breakfast is ready.”

“Your kindness does you credit,” Diana says hoarsely.

“Oh, come now, what’s wrong?” Etta hovers in the doorway – Diana appreciates her friend’s hospitality and kindness, but she knows that Etta is made uncomfortable by grief. Etta pushes things down inside herself. She is not accustomed to Diana’s mannerisms, not accustomed to how Diana will freeze because something reminds her of Belgium, how she will stop dead on the sidewalk because a man’s eyes are too blue, how Diana will do so well all day and feel nothing inside and end the evening by smashing cups in the sink. “You mustn’t let yourself waste away, love, we’ve talked about this.”

“I miss my mother,” Diana says, and as soon as the words have left her mouth she wishes she could swallow them. Etta gazes at her sorrowfully.

“Of course you do,” she murmurs. “Is she far away? Can I send for her by telegram?” Diana laughs, all jagged sharp edges.           

“She is too far away for that. I would…she would understand, Etta. She would know what to do.”           

“I think,” Etta says pensively, “that being an adult sometimes means that you have to figure things out on your own.”           

“I was not prepared to understand this world on my own.” _I cannot do this alone_ , is what Diana really means.           

“Will you eat, Diana?” Etta asks again, and Diana shakes her head.           

…           

She wants to continue her work. She had come to the world of men for a specific purpose, and every day that she wakes in Etta’s spare bedroom with grey light filtering in through the window and a chill in the air outside her blankets, she is reminded of her goals here. She wants to care for others in this time of need, she wants to help people and help rebuild Europe, but Sameer and Charlie and Chief had sent her back to England as soon as the battle with Ares had finished. They had come with her and then they had all scattered to the winds, and she wants nothing so badly but to see them. (She will hoard every last minute she can get with them. Here there are no records, no stories, no students of the classics or of history. Granted, the history of the human race is much larger in scale than that of Themyscira, but Diana sees this as a failing.)           

“Of course we have historians,” Etta says when Diana brings up the topic. “And some people study written works, professors of English and the like. They study our history and language.”           

“They are too broad. I want stories of the epics, Etta,” and Diana is frustrated because she comes from somewhere that is too different, where the same words mean very different things, and Etta just cannot understand what Diana wants. “I want stories of our warriors, I want to hear the story of the last battle I fought.”           

“You’ll be in it, Diana, is that what you’re after?”           

It is as if they are speaking different languages. Diana slams her hands down on the table and the whole structure rattles. (When she is distressed she forgets her strength. Etta’s china can attest to this.)“I want the story,” she repeats, “I want to remember. I am missing too many pieces, Etta, I only know what I did.”           

“Oh,” Etta says, and she draws the word out long. “They won’t…Diana, you’re the focus. You have to realize that here in this country, a woman on the battlefield is rare. They’ll be telling the stories about you.”           

“I do not want myself in your epics,” Diana insists, “I want to hear about Charlie and Chief and Sameer and Steve, I want them to be famous for their good deeds.”           

It is the first time she has spoken Steve’s name aloud since he left her. (He did not die. Diana cannot think of it this way because it will cripple her. He left her.)           

“They will be,” Etta says, and Diana cannot help but think that Etta says this only to appease her.           

…           

That night it is Antiope that visits her in her dreams, and this time they are not alone. Diana finds herself sitting on the edge of the cliff at Themyscira, Antiope beside her, and suddenly something streaks through the sky.           

“Antiope, I must go,” she says, and she moves to dive off the cliff because she has seen this all before, she now knows that this is an aeroplane and that aeroplanes are not supposed to enter the water and that inside the aeroplane is the most important man ever created. Before she can fully stand up, however, her aunt catches her wrist with an iron grip, pulling her back down to her knees. “Let me go!” she shrieks, yanking fruitlessly against Antiope’s grasp. “Let go of me!”        

"If you could go back, Diana,” Antiope says seriously, “would you do all the same things?”           

“No, no, Antiope, I would protect him, I would keep him safe.”           

“Think carefully, Diana. Would you do everything the same?”           

Diana thinks, and she remembers, and it starts to hurt.           

 _Laughing words and stories, told around the fire. Charlie had sung to them in his language, Sameer had told them of his culture and his religion, Chief had told them the fables of his people. Steve had just told them fairy tales. It had been so bitterly cold, cold like she had never felt, cold that seeped into her bones, and rather than try to sleep she had stayed up, huddled around the fire with Chief, talking late into the night with hushed tones. Steve had given her his overcoat so she would be warm. Once she was sure he was asleep, she had regifted it to him, tucking him in. Chief had watched but said nothing. She realized in hindsight how little Chief actually said._            

“Let him drown,” Antiope says, and Diana cannot believe the words that she hears fall from her aunt’s lips. “Let him die here, Diana, and then this all will have never happened. If you had just let him drown, we would still live in peace.”           

“Antiope!” Diana finally wrenches her wrist free, but as she stands Antiope goes for her ankles, knocking her legs out from under her. Diana screams but she is falling, and she barely grabs onto the edge of the cliff face with one hand. Antiope seizes her arm and drags her back up onto the grass, but before Diana can escape once more, her aunt rolls on top of her, pinning her in place. “Antiope, what are you doing? This is not you, this is not right!”           

“How can you forsake our people?” her aunt shouts in her face, and Diana thrashes, forcing the side of her own face into the dirt just to escape the vitriol pouring from her aunt’s lips. “How could you leave us for mankind? Have we taught you so little?”           

“Aunt, stop, stop,” Diana pleads, “just let me get to him, let me go!”           

“If you had let him die,” her aunt says, her face contorted in a snarl, “I would still be alive.”           

Diana wakes screaming, and it is only mere seconds before the door bangs open and Etta rushes in with a candle.           

“Diana?”           

“This is not right!” Diana screams, and before Etta can take any more steps into the room Diana grabs her pillow and screams into it, screams wordlessly until her throat is raw and her voice is no more than a whisper.           

She comes back to herself to realize that Etta is stroking her hair. “Diana, love, hush, it’s all right, love, it’ll all be all right,” and Diana shakes her head against the platitudes, pressing her face even harder into the pillow because it is not right, none of the things that have happened are right, none of the things that come to her in her dreams are right.           

“The things that I see, Etta,” she whispers, “the things that I see.”           

“I think that there are some things that no humans are meant to see, love,” Etta says thoughtfully, “and I think you’ve seen most of them.”           

…           

Diana begins to learn the layout of the city. She paces the streets, walks tirelessly around and around in circles, slowly widening her path until she knows the entire neighborhood. She passes the same woman on the street every day. The woman owns a flower stand and sells the same wilted buckets of peonies and the same tired bunches of lilies every day. Diana knows this because she begins to ask her the names of the flowers and the woman gladly tells her. She always has a baby with her, sometimes cradled in her arms, sometimes in a basket by her feet, sometimes strapped to her back. She cannot be much older than Diana – or perhaps she is, because Diana now knows that appearances can be terribly deceiving.           

“You lose your husband, love?” the woman asks her one day.           

“Not my husband.” Diana fingers the stem of a peony.           

“He was right special, though,” the woman remarks knowingly, and Diana doesn’t know if there are words that encompass how many things Steve was – how kind, how clever, how accomplished, how beautiful. Special, maybe, but to her he was much more than one word.           

“Can I hold your baby?” Diana asks instead, and the woman beams and hands her child to Diana without even a pause. Diana stares at the child, so small that she could carry this baby for miles and never break a sweat. Everything is smaller than that of a full size human, tiny hands, tiny eyes, tiny nose. Diana pokes at one of the baby’s fingernails and can’t stop a smile from tugging at the corners of her mouth when the baby yawns reflexively and settles into Diana’s grasp.           

“Her name is Lydia,” the woman offers. It hits Diana just how much this woman trusts her. Diana does not know her name. She has never even asked this woman’s name. Lydia suddenly weighs too heavy in Diana’s arms.           

…           

 _“You all want kids?” Sameer asked one night. It was the worst question any of them had asked each other. It gave them hope, and Diana was still new to war but she knew that hope was perhaps the most dangerous thing that they could hold in their hearts. Desperation was what created warriors. “Would you want boys or girls?”_

_“Boys,” Charlie remarked. “I’d love a wee man…could show him all the things I know, have him help take care of his mam. Boys don’t do enough of that these days, they all run off. Better to go back to how things were, mark my words, even though them old days weren’t perfect it’s better to go back to those traditions.”_

_“I think a boy, too,” Sameer said thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t know what to do with a girl.”_

_“I would have a daughter,” Diana said. “We do not – it is expected of me. I would not know how to raise a boy to become a good man, but a daughter I could help. A daughter I could shape.” Everyone nodded understandingly, and she knew this was because it was the answer expected of her._

_“I think daughters,” Steve finally said in a rush. “I – daughters. Boys are a mess, and I had enough sisters that it was easy to see which of us got more things done.” There was an uproar of laughter around the fire, and the conversation steered away from children and towards bawdy jokes. Diana caught Steve’s eyes. He smiled at her, took a sip of his beer. It felt significant that they both wanted girls._            

…           

“I no longer wish to see you, Aunt,” Diana says. They are on the cliffs of Themyscira again, and Diana is tiring of this same dream. She wants to remember her aunt with love and kindness. Antiope simply stares back at her, and her gaze is almost as cold as Diana’s tone.           

“It is not up to you, my child,” Antiope finally remarks. “This is the will of the gods.”           

“Why do you insist on visiting me? What satisfaction do you take from this torment, Aunt, tell me!”           

“You mistake my purpose. This does not satisfy me. Diana, this is necessary. You must learn from your mistakes.”           

“I have made mistakes, this is true,” Diana reflects, “but this will not fix them. I cannot change the error of my past judgments, nor the negligence of my ways.”           

“Your errors go back further than you know.”           

“Would you have me leave this human world, Aunt? Would you have me never fight, never see the world, never love?”           

(Did she love? Love abounds in war, and it stems from the same circumstances that any love would. People are close together and stressed beyond comprehension, and the only things that are real are camaraderie and fleeting moments of happiness and faith in those alongside you. Yes, she loved, in more ways than she thought possible. She had not known what to call the men that served alongside her, because they were not hers to command. They followed her willingly, no orders necessary.)           

Antiope does not respond.           

…          

“Why don’t you come to church today with me?” Etta is fixing her hat in front of the mirror over the fireplace. Diana had noticed something different, but she had not pinpointed the uncommon beauty of Etta’s clothes until this moment. Etta is not one for frippery, and yet her dress is finer than any other she owns, a deep blue silk with matching gloves. Diana is not even out of her robe and nightgown yet.           

“Why?”           

“Dunno, love, just thought it might give you some comfort.”           

“I worship the gods,” Diana says reflexively, and she stares into her mug of coffee. She does not know how much truth lies in her words any more.

 _She has not thought of the gods like she did in the trenches. Sameer took time in the morning and evening to pray, when he was able to, and she joined him in her own devotions. She called on Apollo for swiftness of hand, Hermes for swiftness of feet. Athena for her wisdom, Zeus for his strength and guidance_. _Her companions observed her but said nothing. She caught Steve watching her curiously one night as she drew the symbols of her people in the ashes, scraped the last remaining scraps of her food into the fire as an offering. “I worship the gods,” she had said then, and the men had all nodded knowingly – that was something they could understand._

“I do not think I would fit in well at your church,” Diana says finally.           

“Don’t say that, we’re quite an accepting bunch.”           

“I am fairly certain that I have sinned,” Diana says, deadpan, and Etta manages to take one look at her before she doubles over with laughter. Diana stares at her. Etta grabs onto the mantelpiece to stay upright.           

“I bet you have, love, I bet you have,” she wheezes out.           

Etta’s husband pokes his head into the room. (Diana never sees Etta’s husband. He is simply a fixture in Etta’s life, and entirely unimportant to Diana’s. She could not even describe what the man looks like.) “You ready, Etta?”           

“Just talking to our resident sinner,” Etta says, and she’s off again, howling with laughter until the front door slams behind her and muffles it. Diana swirls her coffee and contemplates the patterns it makes in her mug.           

Church might comfort her, she thinks, church might provide something that lacks inside of her. Diana has not felt whole in days. Something inside of her aches, and she wants to blame it on Veld, wants to blame it on the massacre she witnessed and the destruction she caused, but she learned how it feels to grieve for a single person after Antiope’s death and she recognizes the feeling now.           

“I have sinned,” Diana repeats to the room at large, and she half expects the furniture to agree with her.           

…           

Antiope does not speak this evening. She stares off across the sea.

“Why do you plague me?” No response comes to Diana’s question, and she knows that tonight a conversation will be nothing but a fruitless exercise.

“Why do you plague me?” Diana repeats. “Why will you not help me?”                  

The sun sets and lights the sea with golden rays. If Diana tilts her head, it turns as red as blood, and she knows that this must be a vision or a dream or a message from the gods. No sea ever turned red.           

“The sea turning red is an unnatural act, Aunt,” Diana states, and Antiope does not react. “Is this my penance?”           

“There is no penance,” a man’s voice says from behind her, and Diana whirls around to try and source the voice, but there is no one there. “A penance would be inflicted by your own mind, Diana, and this is nothing but real.”           

“You are one of the gods?”           

“As are you,” the man’s voice chides, and with that Diana wakes.           

…           

“Diana, love, you have to do something,” Etta remarks the next day. Diana arches an eyebrow at her over the rim of her coffee mug. “Come to work. Find a job, please, love, you’re wasting away in here. When was the last time you went out?”           

“I go out,” Diana says archly. “I visit a woman who owns the flower stall three streets away.”           

Etta does not roll her eyes so much as her whole head. “That’s not going out, oh my lord, my dear, that’s it!” She leaps to her feet and Diana is so startled by the sudden motion that her chair scrapes a couple inches backwards, quite of its own volition. “We are going shopping.”           

“Shopping?” The entire concept fills her with so much disdain that she feels herself bristle to the ends of her hair. “Etta!”           

“That is quite enough,” Etta remarks sternly, clearing away the breakfast dishes with a speed Diana hadn’t previously thought her capable of. “Shopping it is, and we’re buying you some proper clothes, not to mention a corset, my lord.”           

“A what?”           

“A corset, oh, love, come now, you must know what a corset is – everyone wears them. We even saw one the last time we were in a shop together.”           

“I don’t remember,” Diana says cheerfully, rising and belting her dressing gown more tightly around herself. “All I remember are those ghastly dresses you put me in.”           

“Now stop that,” Etta says sternly, but Diana catches the corners of her mouth twitching as she turns to do the dishes. “You looked just fine.”           

“I couldn’t even walk,” Diana protests.           

“Corset,” Etta admonishes, and Diana gives up and goes to get changed.           

“Oh no,” she says once they’ve arrived at the store and Etta is gesturing towards one of the mannequins. “No, Etta, I am not wearing one of those things!”           

“Don’t you want to look pretty, Diana?”           

“It has hooks!” Diana screeches, and half of the store turns to stare at them. “I will not wear something with hooks! I am not a fish!” Etta tries valiantly to maintain an expression of indignation during Diana’s outburst, but at her concluding statement she starts laughing. Etta’s laugh is infectious, and soon Diana has no choice but to laugh as well. She laughs and she laughs until her stomach hurts and she finds herself gripping onto the base of the mannequin to stay upright.           

 _They had all been sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree drinking tea. They had decided to take a well-deserved break before continuing onwards. Chief had reassured them time and time again that it was safe to stay out in the open during the day – they weren’t at the front, after all. Suddenly, there was an enormous boom and Diana leapt to her feet, just to see small puffs of smoke rise up from the woods. A horse tore out from the tree line and bolted past the rest of the party. Chief pulled a face. Sameer simply looked bemused. Charlie took a long sip of his tea. “Well,” he drawled slowly, watching the frantic horse charge off into the distance, “now, how about that?” There was dead silence. Diana slowly sat back down. Then Charlie spat out the rest of his tea to soak Sameer’s clothes, Sameer let out a yell of protest, and both Charlie and Steve doubled over laughing. Diana couldn’t help but start to laugh, watching them, and soon they had all succumbed. Steve was absolutely howling with laughter, and Diana realized, looking on his face, that she had never seen him laugh. She did not make him laugh, and suddenly she felt like that was her largest failure._

Diana comes back to herself to realize that she is still laughing, but now tears are threatening to stream down her face. She quickly lets go of the mannequin to clap her hands over her eyes and try and assail the wetness there. Etta rushes to her elbow. “All right now, love?” Diana only waves a hand in reply. “Let’s get you a couple new sets of clothes, now, shall we?”           

“Where are you getting the money for this, Etta?” Diana asks as they prepare to leave. She’s wearing her new corset under her new suit, and she has to admit she rather enjoys it. It fits like her armor, reminds her to stand tall and hold her shoulders open. The fact that it’s able to hold up her stockings is just a slight perk.           

Etta freezes in the middle of handing the money to the cashier, then shakes herself back to reality. “Now, don’t you worry about that, love,” she says, and she grabs the bags off the counter (two more suits, a dress for church, another fine dress, stockings and another corset). Diana immediately takes them from her.          

“Where are you getting the money?” she repeats as they begin the walk home. She watches a war unfold on Etta’s face – determination, conflict, resignation.           

“It’s Steve’s,” she finally says, and Diana stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk.           

…           

She knows, this evening, that she will see him. She arrives on the cliffs of Themyscira as she usually does, but Antiope is nowhere to be found. This is her first clue that things have changed, and so she lets herself hope. (It is her dream, why should she not see the people that elude her in the daytime? Why should she not see the people that have left life behind?) It is dusk, fast falling, with the light once again glancing off the water of the sea. She tilts her head to see if it will do the same trick it performed several nights ago, but this evening, the water does not turn red.           

She waits. It is not a peaceful type of waiting. Every inch of her is on edge. All seems well on Themyscira – she can hear the waves crashing against the bottom of the cliffs, the birds finishing their songs for the evening, and although she knows she must be imagining it she thinks she can hear the laughter of her sisters, safely in their homes for the evening. Yet every muscle in her body is too taut for comfort, every bit of her straining for something, some sign, some motion in the trees. She listens and watches the sun die in the sky, and she stands perfectly still as she waits.           

It is an interminable sunset. When the last rays disappear, swallowed in the depths of the sea, she still does not move. She has not seen darkness like that found on Themyscira since she entered the world of mankind, and now her eyes strain against it in vain. Still she waits, and now she dares not move an inch because as darkness descended, she had lost any idea of where she is in relation to the edge of the cliff.           

“Oh gods,” she murmurs, and her voice is hoarse, “do not deceive me now.”           

There is no response.           

It is the worst dream she has yet had.           

…           

The morning dawns in chaos. Etta flings herself into the room and Diana is nearly on top of her before she realizes it is just her friend, come to wake her as always.           

 _They learned not to touch her to wake her. Antiope had always impressed upon her warriors the importance of always being vigilant, always prepared, but until going to war Diana had never felt danger. Now she woke with a start, slept lightly, and pounced on anyone who dared disturb her rest. “Sleeping Diana doesn’t know me from a German,” Sameer laughed over breakfast one day, but she knew his joviality was simply masking the terror she’d seen in his eyes when he had woken her and she had found herself with her forearm tight across his throat, pinning him to the ground beneath her. She could have killed him, and that is not something she was proud of._

“It’s over, Diana, oh, lord have mercy, it’s over!”           

“What?” Diana calls, almost matching Etta in volume, and Etta flaps her hands to try and hush her.           

“The war! The war is over, Diana! We’ve done it!”           

Diana screams and flings herself at Etta, crushing her in a hug, and maybe they are both crying and maybe they are not, for the fine details are lost in the whirlwind that the morning becomes. Etta has what seems to be hundreds of things to do, and Diana is dragged along with her from place to place. They burst into high command at almost noon and the atmosphere is explosive. There is wine, cheering, singing, flags everywhere, and Diana thinks she hears something a bit like gunfire from down the hall. Etta rolls her eyes and pulls Diana behind her by the wrist, finally settling her down on a bench. “Park yourself here,” she says, and she disappears behind a thick oak door into what must be her office.           

There are other women, Diana notes, all struggling through what seems to be reams of paperwork, completely unaffected by the celebrations of the men. She watches the scene unfold, and every so often one of the women will catch each other’s eyes, or Diana’s eyes, and there unfurls a sort of exasperated understanding between them. The women do not celebrate, Diana realizes, for there is still work to be done.

“Etta!” she calls. There is a crash from somewhere inside the office. “Etta!”           

Etta sticks half of her body out of the door, her arms completely filled with stacks of papers. “Hmm?”           

“Why do you not celebrate? Look.” Diana gestures to the women, who she presumes are all secretaries. “You all have so much work but the men are celebrating. Why is your work not done?” Etta scoffs.           

“Love, the only reason those blokes are celebrating is cause we’re getting all the paperwork done for it. Goodness, the only reason you went gallivanting off to Belgium is because I did all the papers. We ran this whole war, the girls and I – not one of us left our desks for four years, no one did anything out of this office until we filled out the forms and dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s.”           

Diana looks around at the scene again.           

“I do not understand,” she says, and she hates English in that moment, hates that she cannot express the sheer enormity of the things that she does not understand, hates that she cannot elaborate on which things she is beginning to understand and which things are still completely foreign to her. She had entered a rapport with her companions in Belgium, but now she realizes that she is entirely alone on her bench, staring at a scene that she cannot comprehend with no one that can understand what she means when she speaks, let alone help her to understand what is happening. Diana is not a small woman, but in this instant, she can’t help but feel as if she takes up less space than a bug.           

“Diana,” Etta says sadly, and Diana does not know what emotions must have crossed her face. “Let me sign these papers and then we’ll go. Oh, there’s some for you to sign too – but maybe that can be for another day.”           

“I – Etta.”           

“Hmm?” There is a crash from somewhere down the hallway, followed by a cacophony of male cheers.           

“I do not know how to write.”           

There is silence for too long from behind her, so she turns back to look at Etta. “Etta, are you well?” She is on her feet before she can control herself, running to her friend and pulling the stacks of papers from her grasp. “Come sit, here,” and she leads Etta back into the office with one hand clasped firmly around her wrist, seating her in a chair and dropping the papers haphazardly onto a desk while she roots in her pocket for her handkerchief. She passes it to Etta, then drops into a crouch in front of her. “Etta, I did not realize that this work was causing you such distress, I would have come to help you if so. Forgive me,” and now she really is alarmed because Etta just starts to cry all the harder, blotting ferociously at her face with Diana’s handkerchief. Diana thinks frantically on what Hippolyta had done in the rare event that Diana cried as a child, and finally settles on catching Etta’s free hand tightly between her own. She massages circles into Etta’s palm, feeling abruptly quite silly.           

It takes some time before Etta calms down. “Goodness, love, pardon me,” she says, blowing her nose loudly into Diana’s handkerchief. “I don’t know what came over me, I’ve been to work a dozen times since that whole incident in Veld, but today it just hit me so hard, what we’ve all been through.”           

“I can help,” Diana offers, standing and offering a hand to Etta. Etta stands and runs a hand briefly over the wrinkles in the front of her skirt. “Tell me what needs to happen and I will help you.”           

“Thank you, Diana, but this is my job,” Etta says solemnly.           

“Today is a day of celebration!” Diana protests. “The men are celebrating in the hallway, and I know that I have worked just as hard as them. You have worked harder than any of us, Etta, let us take today and celebrate.”           

“You don’t know how to write?” Etta interjects.           

“I – no.”           

“How can you not have learned how to write? Did you ever go to school, Diana?” Diana shrugs.           

“I was never very studious. My mother…” Diana has not thought of Hippolyta in what seems like years, and the very mention of her mother makes her breath catch in her throat. Diana inhales. Exhales. “My mother had hoped that I would focus more on medicine, or perhaps the classics – they are the tales of my people, but we do not write them. We carry them inside our heads.” Etta nods, begins rifling through the pile of papers Diana had set on her desk. “But I did not prove to be a good student. I was too athletic, and my aunt trained me to be a warrior from a very young age.”           

“And what did your father have to say about that?”           

Diana has not thought about the fact that she does, in fact, have a proper father until this instant. Things had been too busy after the battle of Ares to truly reflect.           

“He was content to let me pursue my own dreams,” she says, and Etta nods abruptly in assent.           

…           

 _I_ _t had been only a few days but it had seemed so much longer. She was with her companions every waking moment, and all they could do to amuse themselves was talk. She spent the most time with Steve, and she could not say what it was that drew them slowly, inexorably, together, except for his presence made her feel like sparks flew under her skin and pulled laughter and joy to the surface of her mind. It was a gift to have someone that affected her this way. “What do you think brings humans together?” she asked as they traipsed across the moor, forgoing horses for stealth._

_“Lots of things, maybe,” Steve said, “but mostly people that think like each other and work well with each other end up together.”_

_“On Themyscira, we stayed primarily within our own professions,” Diana hastened to explain, “the warriors with other warriors, students of medicine with others, scholars with other scholars. The only ones who mingled so freely were the senators, for that was their duty.” Steve listened intently, eyes trained on her. She had never met someone who paid such thorough attention to her, and she appreciated that he wanted to learn about her home._

_“I don’t think that’s quite how it works here,” Steve said, and before Diana could get another word in he continued. “The universe has a way of pulling people that complete each other, complement each other, together. At least that’s what I believe.”_

_“On Themyscira, we say the gods do it,” Diana remarked, and Steve’s expression shuttered. She knew he was trying. She could not make him believe what she does, they had only known each other for five days._            

…           

That night she finally sees him and her heart stops.           

Unlike her usual dreams, she is not on the cliffs, but in the lower quarters of the town. This is where the warriors live, and Diana tentatively walks through the streets, the heels of her boots clicking on the cobblestones. (She is always wearing her clothes from Themyscira in these dreams. She misses the freedom her old dresses afforded her, freedom to move her arms and her legs however she pleased.) She walks and she walks, because she knows something is wrong and yet she cannot see it. Diana has always scoffed at those who profess an instinct for danger, or a sixth sense to determine when things are not as they seem, but she knows the town so intimately, knows the sounds and the smells and the feeling that comes with walking through the streets at night. She knows something is uneasy.           

She almost walks past him, but she hears a rustle and spins to try and find the source. Her hand flies to her sword. (In her dreams, the Godkiller is always by her side. She considers this a gift.)           

Diana has never felt something like this. Her heart freezes, everything slows to a crawl, then a standstill, inside her chest. As soon as her body has completely slowed down everything slams back to reality, or perhaps starts moving quicker than normal, she is not sure. She thinks she makes a sound, maybe lets out a cry, but she isn’t sure because she cannot control anything about her body in this instant. She is breathing, seeing, hearing, her heart is pounding in her chest and her head is spinning and her stomach is churning and she slams backwards into the side of someone’s house from the sheer force of feeling everything inside her body awaken. (Nobody hears her and wakes to check on the commotion, because this is a dream.) He looks at her, and she knows him, knows every inch of him, knows him in every intimate way possible because they have lived together and fought together and worked together and suffered together and slept together, but what makes her sure that this is truly Steve is his eyes. When they had sailed to his world, his eyes had shone in the moonlight as they do now.           

“You left me,” she says, and she wants to fall to her knees, to scream, to cry, to beg, but now nothing on her body works. She is alive, alive, alive, but the only thing she knows is that she is breathing and taking up space. The rest of her body is frozen. “You left me!”           

He still says nothing. The gap between them could be ten feet or a mile, Diana does not know or care because she cannot cross it. “Gods, please, please,” and she can’t stop the words pouring from her mouth, “release me from this, I cannot do this, not yet - ”           

and with that she is awake.           

…           

“How long has it been?” she asks Etta the next morning.           

“A month,” Etta says. She does not need to ask what Diana refers to.           

“I want to join your cause,” Diana says, and Etta beams.           

So begins a new chapter. Diana awakens to Etta’s rapping on her door at seven, dresses in her corset and her suits, and they pin their hats on side by side in front of the mirror over the fireplace. They walk through the streets arm in arm until they split, Diana going to the left and Etta to the right. Diana works to coordinate protests, pass out flyers, and spread the news of suffrage. At first, she does not know the meaning of any of these words but she does as she is asked. As time goes on she realizes that perhaps this is what her work to help the human race is meant to be. (“How can humans do well if half of their number cannot decide their own fate?” she shouts in indignation one day, and one of the women she works with quickly scribbles down her words. Diana’s words become a rallying cry. She sees them printed on flyers across the city.)           

One month passes, two months, three months, and she begins to find herself and lose herself. She has found a purpose, the purpose the gods insisted that every individual have, and she prays that this is the direction they have always intended for her. She sees no signs to the contrary. Here she is not Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta. Those important things are lost to her. Here she is Diana Prince, and what does her name matter, what does her story matter, because the women she meets do not know what is real. To explain her accent and her lack of basic education, Etta has told all of her fellows that Diana is a foreigner from a distant land. Sometimes, when there is a rare moment of free time, the women all sit down together and teach Diana how to write. She repays their kindness with tales of Themyscira and tales of her time in the war. All they think of her is that she is a good storyteller, and Diana wonders if her mother was right about an innate talent for the classics. (She misses her mother.)           

Etta tears down the photo of Steve from the memorial wall in the center of the city and frames it. She leaves it on Diana’s bed, and Diana throws it into the drawer of her nightstand and slams it shut so hard that the entire nightstand crashes backwards and leaves a large dent in the wall. She is not ready for this.           

 _“How would you like to be buried if you die?”_

_“Good lord, Sameer, could you get a little more morbid? I’m just here trying to have a cuppa before bed and you’re talking about the great beyond!” Diana turned around just to see Steve punch Charlie in the shoulder, nearly causing him to spill his cup of tea._

_“Be quiet.”_

_“Oi, you daft git, just cause you’re paying me doesn’t mean…”_

_“It is a serious question,” Chief reflected, and the gravity of his words made them all fall silent. “Are there any last wishes you would like us to honor? Any of you?”_

_Sameer dug a line in the dirt with the toe of his boot. Charlie took a long sip of his tea._

_“Closed casket,” Steve finally said. “If there’s a body.” Diana wanted to ask what he meant, what a casket was, what he thought he was implying by saying he might not even have a body to show for all his time on this earth, but she held her tongue. Soon Charlie was singing again and the beers came out, and within the revelry she forgot her questions. She never had the chance to ask him her questions, but then again, there was no body anyway._            

Diana does not dream any more.           

…           

“We need to think about something more long term,” Etta says one day.           

“There is still work to be done,” Diana counters. “Although some women have been granted the vote, there is such a large number of those who are still forbidden that basic right.”           

“I mean in regards to you,” Etta says, and Diana stops. For some unknown reason she had always thought of this situation as temporary. She had been waiting for something to change, someone to come and take her away, a new cause or new directive from the gods to shape her path.           

Diana finds herself staring out the kitchen window without realizing quite how she has gotten there. The cold edges of the sink bite into her hands, and she looks down to see her knuckles white against the metal.           

“I thought, perhaps,” she says, and she cannot finish the sentence because what had she thought?           

(She has always placed faith in the gods. She was raised in faith, watched her mother and aunt and sisters pay homage to those who governed their world, relied on the gods for direction and strength and guidance. The gods were what made the sun rise and set, the crops grow, the tides of the sea ebb and flow. Diana knows that the gods are capable of miracles, and maybe she has hoped, maybe she has, that the gods would grant her one more miracle. How many times has she dreamed that there would be a knock on the door, telling her that they had found his body or that they had found some of his things or that they had found him, somewhere? Or that the knock on the door came from Steve himself, standing there, because he had sworn that he would not leave her alone in this new world?)           

“I yet had hope,” she decides to say. “The gods have always been capable of miracles.”           

“Diana, love,” Etta says, and the patience in her voice is strained, “you know he’s gone.”           

“I suppose I must walk my own path now,” Diana says, because she knows Etta will accept no other answer.           

…           

Maybe this is the dream she has been waiting for. She reflects on this, because tonight her legs are moving, taking her to where he waits, taking her close enough that they are almost pressed together, chest to chest. Maybe this is what she has needed all along from her dreams, and now that she is here, now that she has been granted this last wish, she can move forward. Move on from him.           

(Diana finds this unlikely.)           

“I do not know what to say to you,” she says, because it is the truth.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” he counters, and in that instant Diana does not know what to do, what to believe.           

 _“You lied!” she shrieked accusatorily. “You lied again, and you had sworn that you would not do so!”_

_“Diana! Keep your voice down!” He grabbed her arm and dragged her off the main street into an alley. “Yes, all right, I may not be the most honest person you’ll ever meet, but I’m also a spy. Do you even know what that is?” She ignored the barb._

_“I cannot – I will not trust someone who lies as much as you,” she said as she yanked her arm free and spun on her heel, fully intending to march back into the street and make her own way to the war. She could find it, she was sure of that._

_“_ _Diana!”_

_“What?” she huffed, because that was her nature – she had to have the last word. She had to be the victor. People had told her that this was a character flaw. “What, Steve?”_

_“I lie to get us where we need to be,” he stressed. “I don’t lie to you, Diana. Never to you.”_

_“I do not believe that in the least,” Diana muttered. He rolled his eyes. “But, I will never lie to you. And if I extend you that courtesy, perhaps you will not lie to me.” Steve let out the most exaggerated sigh Diana had ever heard, and she thought that maybe she was not the one with the character flaw._            

“Are you here?” she asks. “Here, with me?”           

“Christ, Diana, how would I know? I don’t believe in any gods and then suddenly I’m talking to you on your mystical island home, I don’t know what to think.”           

It is so him, so unbelievably, unequivocally him.           

“I have a new cause,” Diana says.           

“Oh?”           

“Etta has taken me to work for her organization,” Diana remarks proudly. “I campaign for the right to vote for all adult women.”           

“All right,” Steve says, and she thinks it is a mark of his inherent incredible nature that he doesn’t sound dismissive, only impressed. “Do you like doing that?” Diana shrugs.           

“I have waited for you,” she says.           

“Diana.”           

“The gods are capable of miracles. I have waited.”           

“I don’t…”           

“We are speaking now, are we not?” she asks ferociously, and he falls silent. “I knew that we would not be left so unfinished, Steve, the gods would not be so cruel. I am a woman of faith and I have done them a great service. They would not leave us so unhappy, so unfulfilled.”           

“Look, Diana, I don’t know quite how this works,” Steve says, “or how you see religion, or how I’m even here, but I do know that I’m not coming back to you.”           

Diana notices a great deal of things in that instant, but she also does not know how to describe any single one of them besides all of the air abruptly leaving her lungs and her knees hitting the ground shortly thereafter.           

“This is unfair,” she says, “this is unfair, this is not how a service should be repaid,” and Steve grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her until she glares at him.           

“Listen to me. I’m dead, Diana, you saw it happen, we all saw it, and when someone dies they stay dead! Do you hear me?”           

“But…”           

“Diana, millions of people are dead from this war. Millions. I’m not religious, you know that, but what would happen if your gods started running around and decided to answer everyone’s prayers? They can’t bring everyone back, you know that, that’s how the world works,” and Diana is shaking her head because no, no, she has come this far and done so much, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t.           

“I am not human,” she says, and she hears how weak it sounds. “I am a god, Steve, if they do not listen to my commands then what good am I?”           

“Don’t say that!” She stares at him. “Do not ever say that, do you hear me?”           

“But I - ”           

“You saved so many people, Diana, so many lives. Don’t you ever forget that.”           

“What good is it?” she shouts. They are so close together, both on their knees, almost nose to nose, and she does not know why she is so angry at him because it is not Steve that she is fighting. “What good is any of it, all of those lives, if I cannot save you? You are a good man, Steve,” and she knows he is not protesting because her words have shocked him to the core, she can see it in his face. “You are a good man, the best man, and if your world cannot have you how good can it really be?”           

She looks at him, hopes for something, and notices that he is – embarrassed?           

“Wow,” he says.           

“If I cannot have you,” she says, “then why should the gods? They do not see you amongst all the heroes. They already have so many.”           

“Diana.”           

“They do not see you for what you are, Steve, but I do.”           

He kisses her.           

He kisses her, and for an instant she keeps talking against his lips because she does not understand what is happening.           

He kisses her, and then her eyes fall shut and her world stops and maybe she starts to cry, just a bit, because she did not think she would ever have this again.           

He kisses her and it feels simply like lips against hers.           

He kisses her and it is nothing, everything, and she has always preferred women but now she knows that over everything else she prefers Steve.           

She does not know how they separate, or who separates them, or what creates the sense of urgency roiling inside her but she does know that his lips press to her forehead and he speaks to her hairline.           

“We don’t have long, Diana, you know that.”           

“I want you back,” she says. “I would descend to the Underworld to get you back, I would take you out of there with my bare hands.”           

“I know,” he says.           

“I love you,” she says.           

“I know that too,” he says.           

“I will not see you again,” she whispers against the fabric of his jacket, “I will not, you know that,” and she feels him sigh. He always had the most dramatic sighs, she remembers, and she seizes on everything she can, clutches everything about this moment as tightly to her as she can.           

“Hey, what are you thinking about doing for a job?”           

“I like my work,” she says slowly. (He is deflecting. He likes to do that. She’ll let him.)           

“I think they could use you in America.”           

“America? Where you are from?”           

“Yep, the one and only. I hear that the suffragettes there are doing a lot of good work, I bet they’d be thrilled to have you join them.”           

“America,” she says, mulling it over, and it doesn’t sound terrible, doesn’t fit too poorly in her mouth. “Perhaps I will go.”           

“I think you’d like it,” he says, and then she feels his fingers dig into her shoulders.           

“What?”           

“Diana - ”           

“Kiss me again,” she says, because she cannot bear to hear what he is about to tell her, and then she feels his arms slide tight around her and his lips brush hers, again           

and she is back in bed, she knows it, she feels it, feels the blankets tight around her shoulders.           

She cries.           

…           

 _“You’re an odd one, aren’t you?”_

_“Charlie!”_

_“Sorry, Sameer, but we’re all thinking it, aren’t we?”_

_“I do not understand,” Diana said, and Charlie sighed._

_“Look around you, love. You don’t see that many women out here, and why do you think that is? This ain’t a place for you, and I’m not saying that cause you’re not capable, no, lassie, you’re capable, it’s just that there’s things that women aren’t meant to see, if you catch my meaning.”_

_Diana opened her mouth to defend herself – she had defended herself so many times, defended her manners and her dress and her ideas almost incessantly once she had arrived in the world of men – but suddenly Steve was talking over her._

_“I’d say she’s more capable than you, Charlie.”_

_“Now hang on - ”_

_“You say anything like that about Diana again, and I’ll push you off that damn horse. She’s meant to be here, she’s one of us, and that’s the end of it.” He’d spurred his horse on and dashed up to the front, coming alongside Chief, and pointedly ignoring both Sameer and Charlie._

_“Well,” Sameer exhaled._

_“I daresay he likes you, love,” Charlie remarked, and Diana stretched out her own leg to kick Charlie in the shin._

_“I am not here for people to like me,” she said. “I am here to win a war.”_

_…_

She packs a bag with her suits, her corset, her shield strapped on top. She wraps the photograph of Steve carefully in her stockings so that the glass will not break.           

America is waiting.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to manyfacedmirror on tumblr, for being a magnificent friend, and thanks to you, for reading.


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